View full sizeBrent Wojahn/The Oregonian/2003Rose Jensen, a kindergarten teacher at Portland's Woodmere School, leads new students in song last year. A new study has found that kindergartners are among students most likely to miss a lot of school, putting them at risk of poor reading skills and failure to graduate.

Nearly 1 in 4 Oregon students are chronically absent from school, with 130,000 missing at least 10 percent of school days during 2009-10, jeopardizing their odds of learning to read or graduating from high school.

Those findings, in a study commissioned by the national school attendance advocacy group Attendance Works, were released Thursday to call attention to the problem and motivate schools to do more to identify and help students who miss a lot of school.

It's not just high schoolers who are truant, the study found. Some of the highest rates of chronic absenteeism were found among kindergartners and first-graders.

Most of those students, particularly those from low-income families, will suffer lifelong effects from missing so much school, even if they attend school regularly in later grades, said Hedy Chang, Attendance Works' director.

The study, performed by the economic research firm ECONorthwest, suggests that Oregon kindergartners and first-graders may be significantly more likely to miss a lot of school than those in other states.

National research has suggested that about 10 percent of kindergartners are absent for 10 percent of school days or more. In Oregon, a shocking 24 percent of kindergartners missed 17 or more days of school during 2009-10, the study found. Among first-graders, 18 percent were chronically absent.

Oregon is the first state to have a definitive study of chronic absenteeism, however, so it is premature to say Oregon is out of line with other states, Chang cautioned. The 10 percent kindergarten figure came from a national sample of about 25,000 children before the recession hit, so it likely understates the problem, she said.

The most pronounced risk factor associated with high truancy rates is family income. At every grade level, children from low-income families are dramatically more likely to be chronic absentees, the study found.

The Oregon Legislature is set to change the law to require parents who enroll their 5- and 6-year-olds in the state's public schools to send them to school. Now, attendance is optional until a child turns 7.

Senate Education Chairman Mark Hass, who has helped push the idea, said he expects it will pass and boostschools' efforts to get parents to get their young children to school on a regular basis. "Let's make it mandatory for these kids," he said.

Students who miss 10 percent of school days in either kindergarten or first grade show dramatically weaker reading skills in fifth grade, the study found.

Chronic absenteeism is most pronounced in rural Oregon districts, the study found; in a handful, more than 40 percent of primary school students miss a tenth of the school year or more. Even more districts showed chronic absenteeism among 40 percent or more of their high school students.

Chang said schools can take important steps to decrease frequent student absences. Among them: Create a schoolwide culture that attendance is important; make teaching and curriculum engaging and relevant so kids want to attend; reach out to families as soon as a child misses too many days, to find ways to help; offer incentives such as stickers or popcorn parties to students or classes with excellent attendance.